The Triumphant Life of Theodore Roosevelt edited by J. Martin Miller

85 DAILY LIFE AT THE WHITE HOUSE
the police long to restore them to those from whom they have
become separated. The greatest annoyance the police have
to contend with on these occasions are the little ragamuffins,
alley urchins of Washington, known as "egg snatchers";
sometimes thirty or forty of them will organize especially for
egg rolling, and they will snatch eggs from the children and
disappear with hundreds of dozens of eggs. During the day
following an Easter egg rolling not many years ago the Emer-
gency Hospital treated twenty boys suffering from extreme
cramps and colic caused from overeating hard-boiled eggs.
Not only do the little egg snatchers, mostly colored boys from
the slums of the city, consume many eggs themselves, but they
carry hundreds home to their families. As far as possible the
police keep these bad boys out of the White House grounds,
but enough of them manage to get in and will snatch eggs
from the unsuspecting children and pass them through to
their companions on the outside of the fence.
AN EXPENSE TO THE GOVERNMENT
The government is put to considerable cost each year in
restoring the grounds to a presentable condition after one of
these festivals; the grounds are literally filled with broken
egg shells, pieces of paper and scraps of all kinds, necessitating
the employment of a large force of men to clean up the
grounds and again put them in proper condition.